


As Long As You Like (Might Be Forever)

by Nanashi Jones (miaoujones)



Category: Ouran High School Host Club
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Love, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-16
Updated: 2006-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:44:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Nanashi%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just an hour ago, Tamaki thought he'd never have more than his imaginations of them all ever again, and right now any more than that might be too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Long As You Like (Might Be Forever)

**Author's Note:**

> Anime-verse. Set near the end of the final episode.

Although he has changed out of his river-drenched clothes into something warm, dry, otherwise suitable and eminently tasteful, Tamaki doesn't go into the Third Music Room right away. He stands where he is, gazing out the window, smiling at imagined antics and laughter and cake consumption, at conversation and wordlessness that says just as much. It's enough, for the moment, to imagine. Just an hour ago he thought he'd never have more than his imaginations of them ever again, and right now any more than that might be too much.

So he closes his eyes, and imagines, and smiles.

He startles slightly when someone brushes his shoulder and comes to stand by him. Tamaki glances over but Kyouya is looking straight ahead, so Tamaki does too. He looks at his reflection, and at the world beyond it, inside it.

"Don't leave us again."

Tamaki turns at Kyouya's words. The form and inflection indicate an imperative but there's an unfamiliar current beneath Kyouya's tone, and Tamaki wonders if this might be what it feels like when Kyouya makes a request. "I won't," he says. He starts to apologize for causing them all trouble but as Kyouya's gaze slides sidelong towards him, something in it coiled and ready to spring, he catches himself and says instead, "Thank you for coming for me."

Kyouya doesn't move but his mouth, the corner that Tamaki can see, twitches up into that hint of a smile Tamaki loves so well. "We all did," Kyouya says.

"Yes," Tamaki says, "and you are just as much a part of 'we' as anyone here, and so I thank you."

Now Kyouya turns and as he bows his head, Tamaki sees that the smile has graced his mouth fully. It's still there when Kyouya raises his head and, just before the sunlight flashes off his lenses, Tamaki sees the smile is there in Kyouya's eyes too. Tamaki's own smile deepens. He feels Kyouya's smile and his own throughout his body; he wonders if Kyouya feels smiles with his whole body too. "My cherished friend," Tamaki murmurs radiantly.

"Mon ami," Kyouya enunciates perfectly and unexpectedly.

Kyouya has never, not even to mock him as he sometimes does with "my lord," called Tamaki that. "Mon ami!" Though there isn't enough room to leap upon his friend fully, Tamaki at least wraps his arms around Kyouya. To his surprise, Kyouya's arms come around him as well, and Tamaki drops his chin to Kyouya's shoulder in wordless affection.

When Tamaki lifts his head and lowers his arms to move back, Kyouya's hands move too, but he doesn't release Tamaki. Instead, his hand soothes down Tamaki's back, melting his spine. "That's better." Kyouya's breath against the shell of his ear makes Tamaki relax a little more. "We can stay like this as long as you like."

It has been a long time since anyone has held Tamaki. Really held him. And longer than that, back to when he was a mere babe, back before he realized how heavy he was in his mother's arms, that Tamaki has been held in an embrace as long as he truly would like. He wonders if Kyouya's offer is a marvelous coincidence or if Kyouya somehow knows, and how he possibly could...

"You told me once."

Tamaki isn't sure if he spoke aloud without realizing it or if this is another instance of Kyouya's occasional ESP. "I don't remember that." He shifts a little closer as Kyouya's hand continues along his back, his other hand settling at Tamaki's nape.

"I do."

It's such a little thing and Tamaki knows that Kyouya has a mind and eye for all the fine details, but he nonetheless finds himself moved by this remembrance, moved enough to lean into the embrace a little more. Some of the smile still infusing his body spills into his voice as he says Kyouya's name.

The hand at Tamaki's nape moves up to cradle the back of his head. "As long as you like."

"It might be forever," Tamaki tries to joke, but it doesn't come out right, too low and quietly reverberating.

"That would be fine." Kyouya's hand slips down to massage Tamaki's nape, and Tamaki finds himself speechless and feeling rare.

At the sound of the door creaking open, they turn but don't part. "Oh!" Haruhi's wide eyes drop as she turns her face down. "I didn't mean to intrude. We were just wondering where you two had gone off to..."

Before she can back out, Kyouya says, "You're not intruding." Their faces almost brush as Kyouya turns to him. "Is she, Tamaki?"

"Never." With a smiling flourish, his other arm still wrapped around Kyouya, Tamaki holds out his hand to her, invitation tripping from the tips of his gracefully unfolding fingers. She hesitates a moment and Tamaki wonders, crestfallen, if she has taken his sincerity for host club charm, and if he will need to start differentiating himself—

But then she smiles and crosses to them and, without letting go of each other, they adjust to enfold her in the embrace.

Tamaki is so given over to comfort that he doesn't hear anyone come in through the still-open door; doesn't realize anyone else is here until he feels another arm sliding around his hips. He looks over his shoulder and Honey beams up in delight before nuzzling his face against Tamaki's side. And if Honey is here, that must mean—yes, Mori's arms slide around him, around all of them, Mori's torso against his back, Kyouya's hand stilling with the gentle weight of it.

"Here they are!" Hikaru calls over his shoulder in the doorway. The twins bound over to them, wrapping into the hug behind Haruhi, and it's so warm and complete and right that Tamaki forgets to be outraged that they're pressing up against her, and instead smiles when Kaoru's hand worms around to settle at his hip.

After a full minute and a few extra seconds go by, Tamaki starts to disengage–but Kyouya says "no," and Tamaki lets himself settle again; feels the others settling, too.

"I'm content," he promises Kyouya.

"So are we." Hikaru's voice leads, Kaoru's coming right behind and a little softer, not an echo but a fullness of vibration. Honey's fingers tighten in his belt loop as he chimes in with an enthusiastic concurrence, Mori rumbles a pleasantly inarticulate agreement of his own, and Haruhi and Kyouya lean into him. And if Tamaki were to think about it, he probably would be able to tell who reached him first, but at that moment he preferred to yield thinking to feeling as their mouths joined, and he will always remember them both as his first true kiss.


End file.
